Today in Digital Marketing - Your Brand's Instagram Account Has Been Suspended (j/k, j/k...)

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, October 31st. Today, ghosts and goblins in the machine. Instagram is haunted by a nasty global bug. Also, Facebook admits it has work to do after a study found its image recognition was providing ethically troublesome and downright creepy targeting. Breathe easier, another stay of execution for a big Google change. And beware those not up to speed on connected TV. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. No, you're not losing followers and no, your account is not banned.

Starting point is 00:00:33 If you've been ghosted by Instagram, you are not alone. The platform gave social media managers quite the scare this morning with a mysterious glitch that is still affecting millions. The outage started earlier today. Several users have reported that they're either unable to log in or were told their accounts had been suspended. Some users were reporting that the app was crashing and unusable before this morning's update. As a result of the suspensions, users and brand accounts are also seeing that their follower counts have plummeted.

Starting point is 00:01:03 Instagram's own account was down by over a million. The platform confirmed that there is an ongoing issue that is blocking users from accessing their accounts and that it is working on a fix. I should note that at our production deadline, some accounts had started reporting their back online and follower counts are increasing again. According to a new study, ads on Facebook are segmented by race and age based on

Starting point is 00:01:29 photos regardless of whether advertisers want it or not. The study found that Facebook uses image recognition software to classify people pictured in ads based on their race, gender, and age. That in itself isn't surprising. We know their AI looks at images for a whole bunch of reasons. But the study found that the image composition will play a role in who sees the ad. And I'm not going to lie here, it's a little creepy. For instance, researchers found that if you post an ad with a teen girl or a young woman, Facebook will mostly show it to men over 55, regardless of what the ad is about. It also found that white people will see fewer ads with black people in them. The study was

Starting point is 00:02:13 published by the ACM Internet Measurement Conference. It was conducted by creating ads for job listings with pictures of people. Researchers used stock photos in some ads, but in others, they used AI to generate synthetic images that were identical apart from demographics. Then the researchers spent thousands of dollars running Facebook ads and tracking which ads were shown to which users. The results were a little alarming. 80% of the audiences who saw the synthetic photos of black people were themselves black. The audience that saw photos of teenage girls was 60% male, while older women were shown to an audience that was 60% women. The study also found that stock images performed exactly the same

Starting point is 00:02:56 as pictures of AI-generated faces, which shows that demographics determine the results, not other factors. As Gizmodo noted, assuming Facebook targeting is effective, this may not be a problem for product ads. But as one of the study's researchers pointed out, that when it comes to advertising opportunities like jobs, housing, credit, or education, the things that might have worked well for selling products can, of course, have problematic societal consequences. Quoting Gizmodo, Facebook's ad targeting by race and age may not be in advertisers' best interests either. Companies often choose the people in their ads to

Starting point is 00:03:31 demonstrate that they value diversity. They don't want fewer white people to see their ads just because they chose a picture of a black person. Even if Facebook knows older men are more likely to look at ads depicting young women, that doesn't mean they're more interested in the products. But there are far bigger consequences at play. If algorithms are using crude demographic assumptions to decide who sees ads for housing, jobs, or other opportunities, that can reinforce stereotypes and enshrine discrimination, unquote. In response, Meta said the research highlights an industry-wide concern and that the platform is, quote, building technology designed to help address these issues, unquote. transition to Google Analytics 4 by postponing the kill date for its UA360 platform from October of next year, 2023, to July of 2024. Google Analytics 4 is designed to help businesses

Starting point is 00:04:34 collect customer data across web and mobile applications. It will eventually replace Universal Analytics and UA360. The tech giant said the delay is to give enterprise customers more time to transition to GA4 and in the meantime will focus its efforts and investments on GA4 to deliver a, quote, solution built to adapt to a changing ecosystem, unquote. The company added that because of this, it will be shifting away from UA360 and focusing more on GA4 next year. As a result, performance will likely degrade in Universal Analytics 360 until it is eventually killed off. Do you have business insurance?

Starting point is 00:05:16 If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Has mobile advertising finally met its match? A new survey has found that 98% of senior brand marketers think that connected TV advertising

Starting point is 00:05:47 will be bigger than mobile advertising, with a quarter of respondents saying this will happen in two to three years. The study also found that nearly two-thirds of businesses are already running direct response campaigns on connected TV, sometimes referred to as CTV. According to brands, the top reasons to advertise on CTV include engaging with new audiences, increasing engagement levels and driving higher lifetime

Starting point is 00:06:10 values. And apparently half of North American consumers have downloaded a mobile app after watching a CTV ad, while the majority of consumers say they are likely to do so using a QR code. Another win for the format is that 86% of consumers are willing to see ads on CTV, especially if they are relevant to them. On average, consumers are happy to watch one and a half ads within 30 minutes of content, but that jumps 220% to nearly six ads

Starting point is 00:06:39 if they are relevant to the viewer or are entertaining. Only two out of five said they would stop watching connected TV if there were too many ads. And finally, the world's richest YouTube creator says his account is worth $1.5 billion. And he might be right. With 107 million subscribers, Mr. Beast is the fifth most subscribed creator on YouTube. He's mostly famous for doing nice things for people on camera, like giving away a whole bunch of money, giving away a private island. Aside from ad dollars brought in from his followings across content platforms, he's also launched some lucrative consumer brands, like a restaurant chain

Starting point is 00:07:21 called MrBeast Burgers, and a snack brand dubbed Feastables. Now he wants to raise $150 million in a funding round for his influencer empire and various other ventures, which would value the businesses together at $1.5 billion. Incidentally, I am seeking a $1.4 billion valuation for pretty much everything I own. So much better business deal, I'd say. I don't want to brag or anything, but our house is on the A-list of Halloween stops. Or so I'm told by parents in our neighborhood anyway. I do this kind of a game show thing. I dress up.

Starting point is 00:08:02 I've got fancy lights and game show music and a big spin wheel, like one of those gambling wheels. You know, tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick. And then it stops on a particular thing. And almost every space just says more candy. So they kind of get double candy. But there is a space for a prize. There's two spaces for prizes, actually. There's a small prize.

Starting point is 00:08:20 And then there's one sliver that says big prize. And these are big prizes. Of the 72 kids who came last year, yes, they do keep track, only three of them landed on that spot. And so this year I've got a solar-powered robot toy that they can assemble, a crystal-growing kit. There's sort of a princess sticker pop-up book toy thing. Anyway, it's always super fun to have them land on it and get super excited.

Starting point is 00:08:47 So I'm told by the parents in the neighborhood that we are the first stop of many kids. So I hope we have enough candy to hold out. I'll do a video of it and post it in our Slack community, which is another reason you should join, by the way. Just tap the link in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash Slack. All right, that's it for today. I'm Todd Mappin. Thanks for listening.

Starting point is 00:09:06 See you tomorrow. And they came by the light of the moon Did the twist and sung this tune And they danced around and around the night The zombies came Ha ha ha ha ha ha

Starting point is 00:09:22 Ha ha ha ha ha Ha ha ha ha ha ha Ha ha ha ha ha Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Today in Digital Marketing - Your Brand's Instagram Account Has Been Suspended (j/k, j/k...)

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